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Brodhead Describes Duke's Future Plans

More than 4,500 watched Primetime live online, another 50 employees attended the event

Before he began teaching at age 25, President Richard H. Brodhead earned money mowing lawns, selling clothing, inspecting manholes and stocking grocery shelves. "I've got an appreciation for lots of different jobs," he told the audience gathered Wednesday for the Primetime employee forum. The personal glimpse of Brodhead's background was just the beginning of an hour-long conversation with Duke employees about where the university was heading as it emerges from the recession and begins laying out plans for future development around the world and on Duke's main campus in Durham.  More than 4,500 individuals watched the April 27 event live online and another 50 faculty and staff attended the event in the Bryan Center's Reynolds Theater. Brodhead began by addressing the university's financial situation and the efforts during the last several years to reduce the university's budget by $100 million following the 2008 market crash.  "I look at everyone who works here, and I'm only going to say one thing, and that is thanks for your part in accomplishing this," he said. Brodhead said that because of the retirement incentives, salary freezes, reductions in spending and identification of efficiencies, "we were able to preserve the workforce, preserve our jobs and, I think, preserve morale to a significant extent.""I know it was a sacrifice for people, but I think people understand that the sacrifice did accomplish something important for us all," said Brodhead, noting that one of the first priorities was to return to a merit-based compensation process this year to recognize the hard work of employees.While Duke has largely emerged from its budget crisis, Brodhead added a note of caution in moving forward. "We are back in better times partly because we helped put ourselves in better times, but we should still be quite prudent," he said. "I would hate for us to loosen up this year and then find that next year we had another problem. When you're on a diet, you'd better try to get to the goal in the beginning, rather than bingeing and finding you have to go on another one all over again."Brodhead spoke at length about Duke's growing international presence and his belief that Duke must see the global dimensions of an issue to truly understand it. "The main motive for all of our international expansions is to improve and endlessly increase the value of the education we are able to give our students and the researchers who work here," he said. In response to a question by an online viewer about spending money on a campus in China rather than on its campus in Durham, Brodhead pointed out the university was continuing to meet all of its obligations at home, such as its need-blind admissions policy and commitment to providing student financial aid, while taking advantage of an opportunity to enhance the educational experience for students and researchers at Duke. "A university that lives up to the highest potential of a university is going to be expanding, but it's going to be strengthening its home activities by means of that expansion," he said. Brodhead pointed to the Duke Global Health Institute as proof that investing in international ventures and local needs is not an either/or proposition. He said that since it started in 2006, the global health institute has hired 23 faculty and brought many research grants to Duke. "It has an international profile, but it has helped attract jobs to Durham," Brodhead said.He reassured employees that significant care is being taken to invest wisely, taking advantage of partnerships such as the one with Kunshan, where the Chinese city is bearing the cost of building the campus. "We took significant care to minimize our financial exposure in this venture," Brodhead said. "Some of the money we will be spending there, we would already have been spending. Duke has international business programs that take place in different places throughout the year at different times." As part of the university's growing international presence, Brodhead said that half of undergraduates now study abroad and there are now Duke outposts located throughout the world, including in a teaching hospital in Tanzania at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. "I'm going this summer to Singapore where we are graduating our first class from the medical school we built in conjunction with the National University of Singapore," he said. "That's been a powerful asset, not only for making Duke's name visible all around Asia, but also new models of education evolved in Singapore that we are reimporting back to the mother ship at Duke. That's the kind of reciprocity you get."At home in Durham, Brodhead said that future campus development efforts would need support through philanthropic sources. Citing the $80 million check he recently received from the Duke Endowment to rejuvenate the West Union, Page Auditorium and other core campus buildings badly in need of repair, Brodhead noted, "If the West Union was your house, you would have renovated it long ago."Responding to a question about plans for Central Campus, Brodhead described Duke's desire and need to expand its residential campus for undergraduates and the plans to combine living space with arts and international programs. "However, the economy has been singularly uncooperative," he said. "If we do it, it will most likely have to be done with funds through philanthropy, but I'm hoping that someone will find it sufficiently inspiring to want to do it. And if you think that is implausible, look at Duke University. It was created on an act of philanthropy."Morgan Hendrix, assistant director of admissions for Divinity, has attended several Primetime forums and said she always learns something new."Hearing more about Duke in China is always useful," she said. "We often hear that it is happening, but we don't get a lot of details, like the different programs that President Brodhead sees getting involved there in the future ... It helped me understand more so I can go back to my department and say, 'hey, I know that you've heard a bit about this, but this is how we can fit in.' "